While I’m on the MM subject, let me open up a space here to jot down a few ideas about 2012, which will be the 101st year of McLuhan’s birth.

For one thing, his work deserves to have the attention of the public, as the centenary year revealed a major gap in the epistemic imaginary. I’d say, ANY kind of “McLuhan 101” format would be quite appropriate. For few are those who can really reach to the core of the concept “The medium is the message,” and just as few would know that the “global village” in his repertoire was not about a global “brotherhood” of nations but about humanity “going tribal” through electric/electronic technologies. Or that he said that the West is going East [in that tribal sense] and the East is going West [I’d say, from today’s p.o.v. in the sense of going the trodden, polluting path of industrialization].

One can find a UofT student, born and raised in Toronto, who has just defended a master’s thesis on new technologies and is clueless about MM. I have.

 

 

Back in the summer, when dropping off leaflets about centenary events, I was presented with a wall of puzzlement when approaching younger people with all kinds of berry and pad gadgets. MM witnessing did NOT go well.

How about “going McLuhan” instead of “tribal”?

By learning to look at and see the “ground” (i.e., technologies that are being taken for granted, with their effects cavalierly overlooked) and shaping our understanding and life accordingly? Which WAS McLuhan’s own project.

So, I’ve been considering “McLuhan 101” events. [as in “basics,” educationally]

Still to work out the vision, scaled to available interest…